Introducing “Health Years in Total:” A Novel Framework for Valuing Health Outcomes in Cost-Effectiveness Analyses. CHOICE Researchers Introduce a New metric that provides a robust and feasible approach that overcomes specific limitations of the QALY

Lawrenceville, NJ, USA—January 20, 2020—Value in Health, the official journal of ISPO... Read more...

About 15% of hospitals have closed since 1990, and rates of hospital closure—particularly in rural areas—have increased over the last decade.

Dr. Kritee Gujral and Dr. Anirban Basu’s recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper, “The Impact of Rural and Urban Hospital Closures on Inpatient Mortality,” which used Cal... Read more...

Jens Grueger, PhD is the 2019-2020 President Elect for the Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and current Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group in Zurich, Switzerland where he is the senior expert for pricing and market access in the life sciences. Previously, Dr Grueger was Head of Global Access at F... Read more...

The Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) brings together researchers, clinicians, educators, managers, and policy makers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. SMDM is the leading society for studying and advancing decision sciences in health, including incorporation of patients’ values and preferences. It promotes scientific and methodo... Read more...

CHOICE alum Will Canestaro was selected as a 2019 Seattle Health Innovator of the Year in Collaboration.

This award recognizes individuals who are exhibiting extraordinary talent in the four attributes that contribute to successful innovation: collaboration, customer focus, imagination, and perseverance. Recognized for collaboration, Will is cur... Read more...

CHOICE faculty member Doug Barthold has expanded his research program that studies risk factors and care for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). In a recent publication, he and his co-authors examined diagnosis patterns to understand how different types of dementia are diagnosed, and the degree to which specialist physicians offer mor... Read more...

UW Cost-Effectiveness Modeling Team, Ryan Hansen and Greg Guzauskas, were recently presenters at the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review's (ICER) New England CEPAC Meeting on Type 2 Diabetes at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

The UW Team created a cost-effectiveness microsimulation model to evaluate the value of oral semaglu... Read more...

Teams at UWSOP and Fred Hutch look at emerging sickle cell disease therapies

The National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded a unique collaborative, The Sickle Cell Clinical and Economic Impact Consortium that brings together The CHOICE Institute at the UW School of Pharmacy (UWSOP), Fred Hutch, NHL... Read more...

The 41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) is just down the road in Portland this year (Oct 20-23) and we hope to connect with you there. To find the posters and presentations of CHOICE students, staff, alumni, and faculty, please refer to the PDF attached here. See you in Portland!

>> 2019 SMD... Read more...

Zachary Marcum, PhD, PharmD was recently awarded the Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award (K76) from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and The John A. Hartford Foundation.

Notably, Zach is the first pharmacist to receive the grant, which is typically awarded to physician-investigators. This initiative is focused on clinic... Read more...

Recently promoted faculty are finding news ways to solve significant population health problems from Alzheimer’s and related dementias to kidney disease to cancer to MRSA. These preeminent researchers were all recently awarded promotions. Learn more about their research and read stories about their innovative research below.
Abhinav Nath, PhD, A... Read more...

Celebrating 25 years, The CHOICE Institute continues to grow and transform, expanding its impact on population health.
“At CHOICE, we work to advance the study of health economics, pharmaceutical outcomes research, and policy to improve population health in the U.S. and around the world.”—Anirban Basu, Stergachis Endowed Director, Choice Ins... Read more...

Never doubt the profound impact that our faculty and alumni have had on health care nationwide through decades of advocacy for increased access to patient care.
“Pharmacists are the medication experts on the health care team and in the community. Thanks to our work, in addition to improved care at hospitals and clinics, busy people can just pop ... Read more...

The potential impact of personalized medicine launched here at UW School of Pharmacy about twenty years ago, when Dave Veenstra’s graduate student Mitch Higashi,‘01, assembled a 200-member cohort of warfarin patients to study genetic factors influencing their drug response. They partnered with Allan Rettie in Medicinal Chemistry to go deeper.
... Read more...

The University of Washington’s School of Pharmacy today announced a collaboration with global biopharmaceutical company UCB to improve access to care for people living with epilepsy.This interdisciplinary project will explore ways in which community pharmacists can better support people living with this neurological disorder.

The roughly 3.4 m... Read more...

Aasthaa Bansal leads an NIH MERIT award-winning team to develop decision-making frameworks to guide post-treatment care for cancer survivorsDespite receiving effective primary treatment, many cancer survivors remain at risk of relapse and associated morbidity and mortality. Surveillance testing using biomarkers and imaging may detect disease recurr... Read more...

To find the posters and presentations of CHOICE students, alumni, and faculty, please refer to the PDF attached here.

CHOICE at ISPOR 2019

 ... Read more...

On the evening of May 4th, 2019, Oregon State University College of Pharmacy alumni and friends gathered at Portland City Grill to honor the recipients of the 2019 Icons of Pharmacy Award including Sean D. Sullivan, a truly dedicated leader in the pharmacy profession.

Sean was recognized for his leadership at the UW School of Pharmacy whe... Read more...

Congratulations to the 2019 winners of the Louis Sr. and Marilyn Garrison Endowed Prize in Health Policy and Economics, Elizabeth Brouwer (4th year CHOICE PhD student) and Gilbert Ko (3rd year PharmD/MBA student)!

CHOICE Professor Emeritus, Dr. Lou Garrison, is seen here presenting Lizzy with the award, named in honor of his parents, at the CHOI... Read more...

Two CHOICE graduate students were recently awarded global health travel fellowships. Erik Landaas received the Global Opportunities (GO) Health fellowship for his work in Thailand. Enrique Saldarriaga received the Stergachis Endowed Fellowship for International Exchange for his work in Kenya with Dr. Ruanne Barnabas, Associate Professor in Global ... Read more...

Please join us in welcoming Anthony Morgan (who goes by Morgan) to The CHOICE Institute! Morgan is serving as CHOICE's first Research Project Manager. Prior to joining us here at UWSOP, he was at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Morgan will be supporting CHOICE Director Anirban Basu and other CHOICE investigators, including Aasthaa Bansal. In ... Read more...

Congratulations to CHOICE PhD student Elizabeth Brouwer who received conference travel funds from the Population Health Initiative at the University of Washington! Elizabeth will use the funds to attend the American Society of Health Economists conference (ASHEcon) in June 2019.

Elizabeth will be speaking on a panel titled, “Impacts of Federal... Read more...

Congratulations to third-year PhD student in the CHOICE Institute, Lauren Strand who was named the UWSOP Magnuson Scholar for 2019-2020. Magnuson Scholars are selected for their excellent academic performance and outstanding potential for research in the health sciences; they receive $30,000 to support their research, education, and training. ... Read more...

Congratulations to our PharmD students, Michael Sporck, ‘20, Eunice Kim, ‘20, Hanna Kleiboeker, ‘20 and Erin Ichinotsubo, ‘21, who won first place at the highly competitive Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Foundation 19th Annual National Student Pharmacist Pharmacy & Therapeutics (P&T) Competition. The team's advisors were UW... Read more...

Congratulations to Jennifer Bacci, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy; H. Steve White, Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacy; and Sabra Zarâa, CHOICE PhD student, Pharmacy on receiving one of the 2019 pilot research grants awarded by the UW Population Health Initiative. The interdisciplinary team's project is titled, "Community ph... Read more...

This year, the CHOICE Institute’s Certificate in Health Economics and Outcomes Research program has been reaching a wide audience.

In addition to offering the traditional distance learning program to US and international students, engaging 40 students from 4 countries this year, CHOICE is running a separate program sponsored by AbbVie for 24... Read more...

CHOICE faculty member Doug Barthold was awarded the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Pilot Award, for a proposal titled “Alzheimer’s disease related neuropathology among patients with medication treated type 2 diabetes in a community-based autopsy cohort.”

The award is for one year. His study will look at the relationship between use ... Read more...

The CHOICE Institute welcomed Professor Emeritus Charles E. Phelps, PhD, for the 2019 CHOICE Institute Annual Symposium. Dr. Phelps provided an overview of multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods.
"The CHOICE Institute was delighted to host Professor Emeritus Charles Phelps at the keynote speaker for the CHOICE Annual Symposium. Profess... Read more...

Associate Dean Andy Stergachis was appointed to a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a study sponsored by the Veterans Administration, to assess the long-term health effects of antimalarial drugs used by adults, in particular mefloquine, for the prophylaxis of malaria.

The National Academies was... Read more...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. CHOICE PhD student Erik Landaas has partnered with PhD students at UW School of Nursing, Kwankaew Wongchareon and Ana Carolina Sauer Liberato, along with students at UW Computer Science, UW Engineering, and UW Neurosurgery to create a new mobile health ... Read more...

CHOICE Alumnae Carrie Savage Bennette and Blythe Adamson, recent CHOICE alum, will be presenting/co-leading one of the short courses, Tools for Reproducible Real-World Data Analysis. This course will focus on the concepts and tools of reproducible research and reporting of modern data analyses. The need for more reproducible tools in health economi... Read more...

Congratulations to the twelve UWSOP students, comprised of eleven CHOICE Students and fellows and one PharmD student (co-authored with a CHOICE student), who were selected to present posters the annual ISPOR conference in May. Several students had multiple abstracts accepted, making a total of 15 research posters from UWSOP to be represented by CHO... Read more...

Please welcome Marina Gano, the new Department of Pharmacy/CHOICE Institute Graduate Program and Operations Manager.

Marina grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, after first living in Germany and Maryland. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Languages and Literature (Spanish and German) from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

Her career ... Read more...

CHOICE faculty member Beth Devine and CHOICE PhD student Shuxian Chen led an invited workshop last month at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Nexus Meeting in Orlando Florida.

There, they presented their newly developed framework and tool that guides users in evaluating real world evidence (RWE) to inform health technology adopti... Read more...

Team seeks to improve the projections of the future burden of the disease.Anirban Basu, director of the CHOICE Institute at UWSOP, and professor in the schools of Pharmacy and Public Health at the University of Washington, received more than $230,000 from the National Institutes of Health to measure the current and future costs of care for people w... Read more...

CHOICE PhD student Erik Landaas received funding to conduct a mobile health validation study in Thailand. The study is funded by Washington Research Foundation (WRF) and his primary co-investigators include two UW School of Nursing PhD candidates.

PupilScreen a newly developed smartphone app that screens for traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and c... Read more...

Congratulations to CHOICE Institute alumnus and Affiliate Assistant Professor, Kai Yeung, PharmD PhD, `15, who received a research grant from the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation's Greater Value Portfolio program.

Kai's project is entitled, "Value-based Formulary-Essentials: Testing and Expanding on Value in Pres... Read more...

At the 2018 International Conference on Health Policy Statistics (ICHPS) held in Charleston, South Carolina, Anirban Basu was awarded the Mid-Career Excellence Award from the American Statistical Association Section on Health Policy Statistics (HPSS). Anirban was exceptionally and uniquely qualified for this award. Highlights include his pr... Read more...

The newest researcher in The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP, Doug Barthold is taking a couple of approaches that use data and economic modeling to find potential treatments and trends in care of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).
At press time, there are no known drugs that can prevent or delay the onset or progression of ... Read more...

The prospect of developing dementia is terrifying for most people, particularly for those with family members who have had the disease. Many wonder what they can do to prevent the onset of dementia—which is where the research of the Plein Center for Geriatric Pharmacy has some answers.
Experts know there are healthy habits that will make a diffe... Read more...

UW Pharmacy’s Shelly Gray and UW Medicine’s Elizabeth Phelan are teaming up to identify ways to prevent falls in older adults. Their study, “Reducing Central Nervous System (CNS)-active Medications to Prevent Falls and Injuries in Older Adults (STOP-FALLS),” will identify medication safety improvements to reduce fall-related injuries an... Read more...

Researchers Doug Barthold of the University of Washington and Julie Zissimopoulos of the University of Southern California published the first study to compare multiple types of blood pressure medications and the beneficial effect they may have on different populations. Unlike other studies, they looked at how Alzheimer’s disease risk was reduced... Read more...

The PhRMA Foundation and the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) announced that Lou Garrison is one of the first place recipients of the 2018 Value Assessment Challenge Awards. These awards are designed to encourage innovative approaches in defining and measuring value in health care. Lou and the other award recipients were recognized for submitt... Read more...

Assistant Professor Aasthaa Bansal at the CHOICE Institute was recently awarded a $2.5M+, seven-year Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) (R37) award from the National Cancer Institute to develop a dynamic decision-making framework for identifying personalized risk-adaptive surveillance strategies for cancer survivors. This research seeks to s... Read more...

A new study by dozens of researchers from the University of Washington and around the world has found that Greece’s population health declined markedly and death rates rose sharply after harsh austerity measures were imposed on Greece by the European Union and the International Money Fund in 2010.

“This study is important because it provides... Read more...

The CHOICE Institute & the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research (HICOR) Joint Seminar
On Wednesday, May 2nd, Peter Neumann, Sc.D. joined our PHEnOM seminar to discuss whether the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) is becoming the U.S.' counterpart to England's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE... Read more...

Congratulations to 3rd year, PhD student Lauren Strand who received the Louis Garrison Sr. And Marilyn Garrison Endowed Prize in Health Policy and Economics prize! Lauren's paper is titled "New Statin use and left ventricular structure: Estimating long-term associations in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)."

Laurent's research lo... Read more...

Collaborative research between UW School of Pharmacy and VA Puget Sound looked at 175,000 patientsIn a recent study, researchers at the University of Washington and the VA Puget Sound Health Care System have found that an important diabetes drug can be used safely among a high-risk patient population – those with poor kidney function. They conclu... Read more...

With India rolling out the one of the largest public health insurance initiatives in the world, it became more important than ever for government, university, and health care leaders to understand key aspects to health economics. Dr. Jitendra Sharma, Advisor on Health and Medical Technology to the Government of Andhara Pradesh invited UWSOP's CH... Read more...

From all of us at CHOICE, we hope your year is off to a good start. Our PhD students have been busy since last year and we wanted to take the time to highlight a few of their key accomplishments.
Meng Li
Meng Li, a 5th year CHOICE PhD candidate, along with Kai Yeung (CHOICE Alum), and Josh Carlson (CHOICE Faculty) won Journal of Managed Care &... Read more...

We welcome Dr. Doug Barthold, PhD., Research Assistant Professor, to the faculty of the Department of Pharmacy and to The CHOICE Institute!

Doug comes to us from the University of Southern California where he was a post-doctoral scholar with the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Doug received his BBA in Management, Economics and ... Read more...

Partnership between Washington Research Foundation and The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP creates opportunities for students and researchers at non-profit research institutions in Washington state
The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP is pleased to announce a partnership with the Washington Research Foundation (WRF) that will create four new fellowships per ... Read more...

The University of Washington School of Pharmacy congratulates Scott Strassels, PhD, PharmD, on his new position as assistant professor in the Division of Trauma, Critical Care and Burn and scientific director of the Center for Surgical Health Assessment, Research and Policy (SHARP). He previously served as a clinical pharmacist, providing recommend... Read more...

We are witnessing a period of renaissance, as current advances in medical technology and breakthroughs are unprecedented in human history. There is a cure for Hepatitis C that works in weeks. Polio used to afflict thousands around the world; today, there are only twelve cases in just two countries. We are within years—not decades—of personalize... Read more...

The question about the benefits and pitfalls of genetic testing is discussed in, "Is health care ready for routing DNA screening? A massive new trial will find out" in Science Magazine. Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy faculty member and associate director, David Veenstra was interviewed for the story.

"In about 5 years I think we are... Read more...

Five UWSOP faculty and alumni have led ISPOR over the past 20 years
UW School of Pharmacy faculty and alumni are again recognized as leaders in health care. The International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) announced the election of the Society’s 2016-2017 Board of Directors that assumed office on July 1, 2016. Many o... Read more...

“Great scientists and great surfers share a common trait. They don’t position themselves where the big wave is now; they position themselves where the next big wave is going to be. PORPP teaches students to read the patterns in scientific methods, to understand the history that built up behind the last big waves, and to prepare for the ride o... Read more...